Invitation to Poetry: Equinox Edition

Poetry Party #24! I select an image and suggest a title and invite you to respond with your poems, words, reflections, quotes, song lyrics, etc. Leave them in the comments or email me and I’ll add them to the body of the post as they come in along with a link back to your blog if you have one (not required to participate!) Feel free to take your poem in any direction and then post the image and invitation on your blog and encourage others to come join the party!

Today is the autumnal equinox, a time when the sun rests above the equator and day and night are divided equally. It heralds in a season filled with change and the brilliant beauty of death. I invite you to write your own ode to autumn. What are the gifts, challenges, and invitations for you in the days ahead?

The Sycamore,
reflecting the sacred
indicative of the season,
beckons:
now, Carolyn, now.

-Carolyn

*****

Crimson Leaf pauses, yellow veins pulsate, and she joins the Wind in a dance of wildest
elation.
Last evening, Mischievous Elf splotched her gown with driplets of violet.
With the cries of north-heading birds their only orchestra,
They seem to sing…

"Stop!
Appreciate!
Too soon,
Our dazzling performance
Will be over."

-Suz Reaney

*****

The Churchyard

Autumn's gifts of colour
drift obliquely, gently,
on the promise of winter.

Gathered together here,
at the edges of things,
they mourn the season's loss.

When Moses saw the burning bush it must have been the Autumnal Equinox, yet such a pharse would not have entered his mind. His sandles were off, resting in blue sand. This sumac with an Eastern name burst crimson before him. No sheep, no jar of water, no shroud to cover his face.
Nature had chosen Moses in this season of dying.
We must allow God his unpredictableness

*****starting out with equal parts
day and night
with leaves falling
colors richening
and differently scented air
autumn eases into cooler longer nights
for better dreaming
creation winters in sleep
until on the other side
spring bursts open
splendid in resurrection liberty
reborn in greater wisdom
and overflowing depth

so instead of sadness
over another sorrowful summer
I'm ready to welcome
a season of settled quiet
and excited to anticipate
next summer's festivities!

The heart of autumn’s gifts
are its twin energies
of relinquishing
and harvesting.

It is a season of paradox
that invites us to consider
what we are called
to release and surrender.

At the same time, it invites us
to gather in the harvest,
to name and celebrate the fruits
of the seeds we planted months ago.

In holding these two in tension,
we are reminded that
in our letting go
we also find abundance.

By Christine! (Paintner that is) 🙂
Submitted by Pam (her title)

*****

I don’t want to let go.
At this moment I have something,
I AM something.
What?
What if I let go?
Terrible possibilities
Tantalizing possibilities
Calculating the probabilities….
Tipping from the known to the unknown,
I remember faith and hope.
I let go.

-Wronda

*****

The leaves should be turning the air
sharp with the bite, of frosted
apples heavy in the sun, gleaming
wetly with feasting wasps warmed
by the last lingering caress
of a fleeing sun.

My bones know the turning,
the swing of this old Earth as days
grow shorter, and they wait
in a new land where the oaks,
festooned with Christmas balls
of dusky blue go on
as if time stood still, heat
still dewing the brow as noon
creeps on toward summer, unaware
that winter lives in another place.

The bright shocking red to hold
as a talisman against the coming dark
fades to unreality and bird call
outside my window brings its own shock
in a place where there is no need
to flee South, or beneath the rich
black soil, wet with the last tears
of summer. For all is warm, and dry
forever and ever and we might forget
that anywhere else exists, or that time
spins on without us here where autumn
comes shyly, and gently, if at all.

Would I have even noticed you
if you had lain there in the drift
of leaves all red and orange and gold
just another vivid token
an ordinary miracle
trampled under foot?

How can it be that you,
separated and fallen from your source of life
can be so exquisite in your dying?

What is the measure of your worth by now?
Too old, beyond your chlorophyll bearing days
no longer exhaling oxygen and gulping CO2
or providing cooling shade,
is your only future the bonfire or the yard bag?
Will you now contribute to the carbon footprint
you reduced when you were truly ‘green’?

Maybe in the best scenario someone’s livelihood
will be to sweep you up to make you into mulch and
spread you on the garden beds. Or that a child will marvel at you,
choose and give you (gift you are!) to someone dear.

Until then, my brilliant friend, nothing is left for you to do
but to delight the eye.

Summer,
no longer are you the seed of promise
or the hope-filled tender shoot.
No longer are you the tight bud
concealing mystery
or the splayed folds of a shameless blossom
wet with perfume.
The hours, liquid and lazy as honey,
have given you all that they could to coax your good fruit
as did the early and late rains and this breathing world.
Now the blade and the hand have come
to cut and pluck your increase
Now is the season of your surrender
inevitable
as you succumb to rest.

-Laure

*****

Held

I fall down to the ground
Unable to rise again
And no desire
To climb back up.

Breath of wind carries me
To all of the places
That I am meant to see.

Coming to rest in the solidity
Of what I can not know
Dissolving into what is.
And shining.
Just shining.

-Rebecca Johnson (from Alaska)

*****

Death having done its worst
you lie in crimson splendor
stark in contrast with a world
that cannot make sense
and so we struggle
and so we stare
at you, made beautiful in death
hoping that death was
not cruel, but merely sudden